Can the pentagon be politicized?

If a group or organization has more than two humans, it is political.

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Yes, the Pentagon has always been extremely political.

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Every Prez wants friendly faces in important places!

At him saying he can't go into detail.

It's called political appointees. Not a new concept.

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Now they are dealing with severe cuts and it's causing morale problems.

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Everyone is feeling the cuts, not just the Pentagon.

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and who traditionally don't show political leanings in the workplace

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Ike said it best in his departure from the Presidency as to the military industrial complex. LBJ made a vast fortune on that with the private sale of the old Chrysler tank site to NASA which became the Michoud facility in Chalmette. He had bought the acres and equipment at a fire sale by Chrysler.

DoD is absolutely more politicized then the IRS or CIA. The CIA can insulate itself from a lot of the politics through its secrecy, and besides the Director, most everyone below are careerists. The IRS has been used for political purposes but in general its mandate and budget are very simple.

DoD is much more political because of size. More political appointees, many with little professional military experience. Disgusting careerism in the uniform ranks as the up and out policies of promotion create a shark tank like atmosphere. The size of the budget creates an inherent corruption between defense contractors, congress, and DoD.

It may be more apparent now to uniform members who generally are more conservative, but think for a second about the Republican alumni who served in DoD and how they used their positions to advance their ideological and personal political agendas.

Pentagon = civilians/military/political appointees/contractors. It's not like everyone walking around the Pentagon is in uniform.

In the past the policies coming out of DoD were not that radical. The arguments between parties was, what is the better way to kill communists or stop communists, but there was no real argument amongst the adults that communists needed to be stopped.

The Clinton administration certainly rubbed the military the wrong way, but the Generals and Admirals were pretty unified for the most part.

The Iraq war broke the status quo, a large number of senior military officers became extremely pissed about how the war in Iraq was being run, and it created tribes that had never really been seen before. So coming into Obama's term a number of officers who were on the outs were able to capitalize, and others who had seemingly remained neutral saw that one had to do more then their job and began "cheerleading".

Throw into the mix the very high priorities of repealing DADT, opening the ranks to women, budget reductions, the "leaks", an amateurish foreign policy amongst other things and the department begins to become more political.

Credit Obama for giving the Department top cover by having Gates and Hagel as secretaries, but this has caused friction as well as certain important Democrats who were given subordinate duties have been just a little bit pissed at being passed over as well.

As I understand it, in the military, the more stars you get on your shoulder, the more liberal you tend to be.

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Those guys became politicians the very second they pinned that chicken on their collar.

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a.k.a the colonel lobotomy.

For your amusement.

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I called former Congressman and Lt. Col. Allen West (ret.) to get his take on the manual. In a nutshell – he wants a congressional investigation.

“This is the Obama administration’s outreach of social justice into the United States military,” he told me. “Equal Opportunity in the Army that I grew up in did not have anything to do with white privilege.”

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